This invention relates to a call processing system, more particularly, to a method of processing a call that may be one of many types. In a preferred embodiment the invention is utilized to process a call comprising either a fax call or a voice call so that a human caller will be immediately answered without delay when there is a voice call.
Presently, many new techniques (e.g., CT media), have been developed to provide integrated call services in a single call processing system. It is very common that a single call processing system provides at least both voice call and fax services. In such a system, usually there is a detecting program running to assess the type of a call (i.e., to decide whether the call is a fax request or a human voice call). After the type of the call is deduced, the call is handed off to a proper call processing application which will answer and process the call. Usually the process for assessing the type of the call will last several seconds. This is not too bad if the call is a fax request, but it can be annoying if it is a voice call since the caller has to wait for several seconds before getting an answer.
In order to answer a call immediately, an integrated call processing application is used which is capable of processing both a voice call and a fax call. However, this call processing application needs to be aware that the call may be a voice or fax call. Therefore, the application is cumbersome and expensive as compared to single-functional processing applications. The problem is even greater with respect to calls that may be processed by more than two applications.
The object of the present invention is to provide a method of processing a call in which two or more different call processing applications may simultaneously operate on a single call. The applications have no knowledge of each other. During the processing of the call, if it is determined that one or more of the applications is inapplicable to the type of call in question, then that application drops out. The technique avoids the delay typically encountered until the type of call is determined.
In an exemplary system that does voice and fax calls, it is no longer necessary to answer the call and wait while a detection algorithm determines if there is a voice or fax call. In accordance with the invention, a voice processing application always runs immediately after the call is received, regardless of whether the call is a fax call or a voice call. A detecting application runs simultaneously to detect whether there is a fax tone in the call while the voice processing application is answering the call by playing prompts. If a fax tone is heard by the detecting application, the call is switched from the voice processing application to a fax processing application, and the latter will answer the call while the former drops out. If there is no fax tone detected, the voice processing application simply continues its work without awareness of what other applications are doing. Thus, if the caller is a human being, he will be immediately and continuously answered by the voice processing application and does not have to wait for several seconds when the system is assessing the type of the call.
Furthermore, separate call processing applications may be used, one for processing voice calls, the other for processing fax calls. The separate applications may be from different vendors, and may operate totally independently of each other. No single application needs to be capable of processing both fax and voice calls. By independent applications, we mean applications that may operate without knowledge of each other, even on different hardware if desired.
In one embodiment, the voice processing application is a Integrated Voice Response (IVR) application. A FaxDetector application may be used both to receive a call and to detect a fax tone in the call.